Development Communication

Development communication - An Overview
A paper by Rogers on Diffusion paradigms

First World

• Highly developed
• Urban based
• Classes are structured differently (collective)
• Free enterprise and industry
• Distinct Political communities (freedom)

Third World

• Agriculture and traditional. (Subsistence) 
• Free enterprise or Central Planned 
• Socialism 
• Capitalism
• Exploited by first world and aided by first world.
• Poverty (relative)

Third world problems

1. Inadequate knowledge, information and communication
2. Literacy and Education
3. Health 
4. Poverty
5. Economics
6. Inequality
7. Over population

How third world is viewed by first world

• Stereotype
• Innovation prejudice, 
• Persuasion Prejudice
• 1st world doesn't listen to feedback
• Must directly supervise persuasion
• Mass media prejudice - thought broadcasting would work
• Psychological prejudice 
• Fatalism
• Peasant mentality
• Stubbornness 
• Negative attitude

The dominant Paradigm

Top down diffusion.

• Trickle down - Innovation, cascade effect downwards
• Mass media. 
• Technology. 
• Humans are stereotyped as profit driven, 
• Western consumerism indoctrinated.

Problems

• 3 rd world people don't absorb
• Individual is less than group
• Mass messages aren't absorbed and messages are hidden
• Selective exposure
• Selective attention
• Rosy picture

The alternative paradigm

Negative impression of backward countries, use media to aid for self development. Folk law, grassroots, basic communication strategies, Oral, story tradition, through specially encoded messages for the masses.

The New paradigm

Looks to needs of the culture and tries to adapt the cultural needs to modernization.
Two way communication, feedback.
Focus on ethnic usefulness, defensible



Some extra reading